Aug 28, 2024 5 min read

Something Special’s Happening in America

I’m Umair Haque, and this is The Issue: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported publication. Our job is to give you the freshest, deepest, no-holds-barred insight about the issues that matter most.

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There’s something special happening in America. It’s a moment of transformation. Americans are embracing Kamala’s politics of joy, and Coach Tim’s strength in vulnerability. It feels different, all of this, because it is.

It’s not just remarkable for that reason, though—a moment that’s different for America. This cuts deeper still.

America’s rewriting the rules of history right now.

Let me explain.

What would we expect to be happening in America right about now?

All the macroeconomic and macrosocial trends there are point to…anything but this. They suggest that Trump should be winning. That extremism should still be spiraling, unchecked, and it should feel unstoppable.

Which trends are those, and why do they say that? Think about that tiresome thing called “the economy.” Good or bad? Good, if you’re a pundit. But the startling truth is that the economy right now is destroying white collar jobs and creating largely temporary, low-paid ones, in hospitality and leisure and so forth. That comes atop decades of stagnation for Americans. But let’s pause there, because when I discuss “the economy,” people take it…politically.

So let’s rewind. Life in America. How’s it going? According to the most authoritative source on the subject, the Social Progress Index, over the last decade and a half or so, America’s standard of living has been in startling decline. It’s dropped from 16th in the world to 29th. That means it’s not in the top tier of countries anymore, those with a high quality of life.

All of that’s backed up by plenty of facts, stats, data, and just lived experience. America’s stressed, depressed, and distressed, as we discussed in the last post. The majority of people live paycheck to paycheck, and as the labour market goes haywire, that’s only going to get worse. Millennials struggle to start adult lives, and generations face downward mobility.

As a consequences, and I won’t dwell on it, because we’ve discussed it many times before, America’s come undone as a society. Social bonds have frayed. Friendship itself is becoming a luxury. There’s a severe lack of social ties, and that unmoors societies.

What does all that predict? If history’s any guide, all that should predict…that the fanatics be winning.

Think about any number of historical examples. Let’s go back to the textbook one, the Weimar Republic. I’m not saying America is that, just that directionally, it faces the same set of challenges—a sharp decline in living standards, rising debt levels, social bonds breaking apart. We all know what happened next: the Nazis.

We could go all the way back to ancient Rome. How did Caesar rise? He was the first populist, empathizing with a population that was hungry and broke, offering them bread and circuses. Rome’s living standards had begun to fall sharply, after decades of war, entrenched elites siphoning off all the growth, and systemic corruption and nepotism (sound familiar?) No wonder Romans thought of him as their savior, not democracy’s great enemy.

History abounds with these examples. When living standards plummet sharply—and that doesn’t just mean “inflation,” but the deeper facets we’ve discussed, from long-run stagnation, to a dwindling of opportunity, to entrenched downward mobility, to social bonds unravelling—when all that happens, history says: democracies tend to break.

The fanatics rise, and the vast, vast majority of the time, they win.

But America right now isn’t falling prey to that pattern.

See how remarkable that is? I think that’s really crucial to see, and I reflect on it a great deal these days. History says this shouldn’t be happening. But it is.

Americans are poised to reclaim their democracy, send the lunatics packing for good, see off the authoritarian slash fascist threat—all in the middle of a sharp decline in living standards, amidst a widespread downward trajectory in all macro-level trends.

We have almost never seen that happen before. Every. Anywhere.

Let me give you another example, to drive the point home. In the 1990s, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Russia was poised to be free. It joined global financial markets, opened up its economy, floated its currency, etcetera. But it didn’t make it. None of those things were enough to produce a rise in living standards. Mafias began to take over the country. And we all know by now who emerged as the savior of the people amidst this chaos.

Again, I’m not saying “America now is Russia then.” But I am pointing out history’s tendencies, in this case, very recent history’s.

So what’s happening in America is very, very special.

America is now making history.

And that’s important to grasp, because…well. What have we been doing around the world for the last decade and more now?

We’ve been repeating history. Trumpism is what we’d expect from negative macro trends, and that was a repetition of the 1930s. Britain chose Brexit, in a kind of bizarre, insane repetition of its own imperial aspiration. Around the world, democracies fell prey to authoritarian movements, and began to repeat the great follies of the past, from ultra-nationalism to scapegoating to putting crackpots into power and more.

The last decade or so? It’s felt like things have been stuck because we’ve been repeating history. Not making it.

Making history is different. It’s saying: we’re not going to repeat these mistakes. We know what history says we should be doing. But we’re not going to do that, because we’re going to choose what’s wiser and truer instead. We want to go somewhere, not just end up circling around the abyss.

So this moment in America is profound. Sorry if you find that cheesy, but I don’t use that word lightly. Kamala and Tim have energized the nation, true. But Americans, too, are doing something astonishing and remarkable, as a society. They are choosing not to repeat history. They’re making it. They’re saying we don’t have to repeat this old pattern, the one of folly, where decline leads to implosion, by way of choosing authoritarians in sheer spite and despair.

America’s teaching us something. History isn’t an iron cage. We’re not just doomed to repeat it, endlessly. We can choose to make it, too. We always have that power, and the trick the bad guys pull is convincing us we don’t. Fatalism wounds us, breaks our spirits, and thus history repeats itself.

This isn’t just a moment for transformation for America. It’s a moment where history itself is being written anew.

The election’s not a done deal, yet. But Trump’s on the ropes. And even that much is remarkable in itself, because with macro trends like it has, this election was Trump’s to lose. He should have been winning in a veritable landslide, and even he knows it, which is why he’s bewildered and off kilter. He has history’s iron cage on his side, true. But America has something even stronger. The glimmering of possibility.

❤️ Don't forget...